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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26479768">Echoes</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/newsbypostcard/pseuds/newsbypostcard'>newsbypostcard</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>[tma] Comedy Oneshots [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magnus Archives (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Dark Comedy, Gen, Horror, Humor, Murdering your own clone is something that can be so personal, Violence, doppelgangers</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 10:13:35</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,273</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26479768</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/newsbypostcard/pseuds/newsbypostcard</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Martin and Martin look at each other with alarm, and the other Martin disappears under the desk again, cheeks blazing crimson.</p><p>“Oh,” Martin breathes, pressing his hands to his face. “This is <em>weird</em>.”</p><p>“Tell me about it,” Daisy says. “At least you’re having a normal reaction. Tim caught one look of himself and started stripping. They’re in Jon’s office having it off right now.”</p><p>--</p><p>The Archives have a doppelganger problem.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>[tma] Comedy Oneshots [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1774864</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>138</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Echoes</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>In my opinion the only real personality test is how you would react to your clone.</p><p>I loosely positioned this sometime in Season 3. Be warned this is dark comedy and that murder is treated with levity.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><br/>
</p><p>When Martin walks into the Archives ready to start the day, coffee in hand, Daisy greets him on entry by shoving him against the wall, knife at his throat.</p><p>The coffee hits the floor and spills all over his trainers. </p><p>“Er?” Martin squeaks.</p><p>“Are you him?” Daisy asks.</p><p>“What?!”</p><p>“Are,” Daisy says again, more slowly, “you him.”</p><p>“I think so? I don’t really…” 

</p><p>Then he sees Daisy’s body lying on the floor.</p><p>Daisy with a knife at his throat.</p><p>It's going to be one of <em>those</em> days.

</p><p>“Can—” Martin clears his throat. “Can you let me go now?”</p><p>Daisy considers this at length, but finally does let him go, turning her—<em>bowie knife?</em>—over in her hand. “Are you Martin Blackwood?”</p><p>“Yes? Obviously? Why wouldn’t I be?”</p><p>Daisy points toward his desk. “Then who’s that?”</p><p>It’s only a pair of eyes and a shock of red hair peering terrified out from under his desk, but Martin’s looked in the mirror enough times to know it’s himself staring at him from under there.</p><p>“Oh.” Martin straightens and points. “Oh! It’s a NotThem!”</p><p>“It’s not a NotThem.” Daisy gestures to her own body on the floor. “NotThems don’t die like that.”</p><p>Martin pales and wonders distantly just how much experience she’s had with this sort of thing. “I… see.” He swallows and looks over at the other version of him, but he’s disappeared again underneath the desk. Typical. “How long’s he been here?”</p><p>“He was here when I got in.”</p><p>“And how long’s he been… under there?”</p><p>“Pretty much since the knife came out.”</p><p>That makes sense.</p><p>Martin opens his mouth to ask the next question in the queue, but he’s interrupted by a restrained cry and a bit of clanging from the back. Martin looks over to see Jon leaping back, rapier in hand, locked in a fencing duel with—</p><p>Himself.</p><p>Martin watches this unfold with a wince. “Those aren’t the cursed rapiers in artefact storage, are they?”</p><p>“Fraid so.” Having discerned that Martin isn’t an immediate threat, Daisy has stretched languorously in a chair, long limbs loose in what looks suspiciously like relaxation. She lights up a cigarette, right there in the Archives. If only Jon(s) were paying attention enough to see this. “Both Archivists ran for them at the same time. Suppose it seemed like less risk to take on a curse than to let the other one live.”</p><p>Martin considers this, watching the duel, faintly impressed. “Why is he so… <em>good</em> at fencing?”</p><p>“On some sort of competitive team at Balliol, wasn’t he? Threatened to duel me once.” Daisy rolls her eyes. Martin has the distinct impression she’d snap a rapier with her bare hands if he so much as tried. </p><p>Maybe realizing the immediate danger has passed, the Martin under the desk re-emerges, avoiding Martin’s eye pointedly, and turns to watch Jon launch an ill-effected kick in his own general direction.</p><p>Yeah, that tracks.</p><p>“Oh, please,” says the other Jon with a sneer. </p><p>Martin and Martin both laugh. Then they look at each other with alarm, and the other Martin disappears under the desk again, cheeks blazing crimson.</p><p>“Oh,” Martin breathes, pressing his hands to his face. “This is weird.”</p><p>“Tell me about it,” Daisy says. “At least you’re having a normal reaction. Tim caught one look of himself and started stripping. They’re in Jon’s office having it off right now.”</p><p>Yep, that… would explain <em>those</em> sounds. “And you…” Martin gestures at the Daisy on the floor. “Well.”</p><p>“She had to die,” Daisy rasps mid-drag.</p><p>“Right,” Martin says weakly. “And have you got <em>any</em> idea what’s causing this?”</p><p>“Nope. But I reckon it’s temporary. <em>That</em> one’s the fake, I’m pretty sure.” She points at the desk. “The real ones all walked in to see ourselves already here. Think it’s an echo or some such. Something trying to masquerade as human, temporarily making copies of us to see how it works… They look like us, sound like us, have the same mannerisms we do. To the naked eye, there’s almost no difference.” Daisy’s eyes settle on her own fallen form. “Think it’s relatively harmless,” she says distantly. “They only seem to want to do us harm when that’s true for us, too.” Then Daisy looks at Martin again, eyes suddenly too clear. “If you and your clone want to have it off, too, I don’t see the harm.”</p><p>“Er,” says Martin.</p><p>“Er,” says the Martin under the desk.</p><p>“No, I don’t think so.” But now Martin has to live with the knowledge he briefly considered it. He watches Jon fence for a while, and when Martin re-emerges from the desk to do the same, he is also forced to reckon with the fact he’s a lot less subtle than he thinks. “Has anyone gone through artefact storage inventory—”</p><p>“Melanie’s doing that right now,” Daisy says.</p><p>“Where’s her clone?”</p><p>“With her. Last I saw they were both holding a knife to each other, but neither’s willing to fight or take the jab. Think they’re too mutually fascinated by the other existence to quite manage the level of—” Daisy straightens. “Oh.”</p><p>Stepping around the fencing duel, Basira walks into the room from its other side. “Hey,” she says, eyes finding Daisy.</p><p>“See,” says Daisy, turning her knife in her hand, “that one’s fake.”</p><p>“How can you tell?” Martin asks—but a second later, another Basira walks in through the door behind them.</p><p>It all happens so fast: both Basiras stop dead. Daisy flips the knife in her hand and offers the handle to the Basira beside her. Then, with impeccable accuracy, the Basira nearest them takes it and launches the bowie knife across the room.</p><p>The Basira echo falls to the ground with a cry. The Jons stop fighting; the moaning stops from behind Jon’s office door.</p><p>“What the hell was that?” two Tims chorus from the other room. </p><p>The other Martin is gone back under the desk. Martin envies him.</p><p>“Not to worry,” Daisy calls, calmly offering Basira a cigarette. “Morning.”</p><p>“Morning,” says Basira. She looks at the dead Daisy on the floor, then steps neatly around her and takes the cigarette she’s offered. “How long’s this been going on?”</p><p>“Bout an hour.”</p><p>“Any leads?”</p><p>“The Melanies are on it for now.”</p><p>Basira hums and asks nothing more. The Jons begin their duel again. Somewhere in the distance, a blissful Tim moans.</p><p>“Right,” Martin says tersely. He’s going to go insane if he hangs out here. Sighing, he goes up to the desk and raps his knuckles against the top; the other Martin shouts in surprise. “You—er—want to go help the Melanies, make sure they don’t kill each other?”</p><p>“Oh,” says Martin. A moment later, he shoulders himself out from under the desk. “Yeah, I suppose that’d be fine.”</p><p>Finally, Martin thinks, someone sensible. “Should we stop the Jons?” Echo Martin asks as Martin surveils them from afar.</p><p>“No,” says Basira, “let them go. It’ll be good for him. Get something out of his system.”</p><p>Martin sighs, exchanging a look with himself. “I’ll take one Jon, you take the other. Figure if we just—”</p><p>“—transpose them a bit—”</p><p>“—can’t weigh very much. Avoiding the—”</p><p>“—files, yep.”</p><p>“He won’t like that very much.”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>And so the Martins lift the duelling Jons out of the corridor, pause long enough to reply “Yes, yes,” to the Jons’ unified yelp of, “Martin, put me down!”, and stop at the mini-fridge for enough sodas to fuel what’s sure to be hours of research with a pair of tense and armed Melanies, taking the lid for the garbage with them as a makeshift shield.</p><p><br/>
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